New Year's Eve +

“A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.”

“Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.”

unknown authors

Because this was a very wonderfully unique New Year's Eve…. I want to take a moment and write a post about it. Usually we spend our holidays with just our families as both my husband and I have large families that live nearby, therefore it is rare that I get to see my closest friends during the holidays.

So it was really wonderful that both my close friend and I had no plans with our families therefore we decided to ring in the new year together. We were hosted by my brother as he is a single guy and lives in one really cool apartment in downtown (he just happened to not have plans either). It turned out to be a very fun and relaxing evening and I believe it was because we were amongst true friends, people who have known you through the years and still love you for who you are.

Chris and I decided that although we would have loved to have both kids with us for New Years Eve it would be much easier with just one of them. So we chose to go with the one who would most likely sleep through the whole thing no mater if we got loud or not. So we left Seth with my mom he got to go to church with my parents and hear fun worship music (which he loves). Luke came with us and he did great, literally slept most of the evening and night except for when I took these last few photos.

It was a very low key evening with just 5 of us there, here are Luke and Tabi getting some one on one time together. My friend Tabi is expecting her first little boy in just a couple of days and you can tell by that glow on her face she is just ready to meet her little guy.

This is Tabi and I with Luke at about 12:30 in the morning on 1.1.12, and we are both wondering how we were able to stay up past midnight since she is 9 months preggers and sleep deprived and I have a one month old and am sleep deprived. But we did it! Next year we will have little 1 year olds on our hands, hopefully we'll get to spend it together and take a photo with our boys.

I never imagined that I would be experiencing pregnancy along side my closest friend, that kind of thing only happens in movies or books or if people really plan things out. No we didn't plan this but it was so cool to get to go through this together. I am so excited for her to meet her first born which will hopefully be very soon. When she told me she was pregnant i just about jumped out of my chair and then couldn't stop grinning for like an hour.

One of my favorite memories from this experience is when at about 6-7 months in to our pregnancies we got to go out for a whole day just the two of us, and talk all about babies and parenting and baby gear with no interruptions. We didn't quit until we were both dead tired and barely putting one foot in front of the other, and by that time we had had breakfast and lunch and we had gotten her babies.r.us registry semi-completed. I will never forget that day.

Another cool thing we did this pregnancy was we got to go to Maui with our families and we shared a condo, I think we were both nervous about how that would work out as we had never done that before but it turned out to be one of my all time favorite tropical holidays and I'm definitely looking forward to a repeat.

It's funny that this was supposed to be a new year's eve recap and I'm making it another 2011 recap. but I did want to jot these memories down as both were some of the best moments of my 2011.